Medial Axis Representations for the Analysis of Human Shape in Images

Motivation: By using more recent signal processing techniques in conjunction with an updated representational framework, the benefits of medial axis representations can be exploited while avoiding several of their traditional drawbacks. Some types of medial axis representations appear to be well matched to the class of shapes that comprise human faces and bodies. These descriptors highlight the underlying structure of the overall shape, while also representing important multi-scale aspects of the component shapes. As an intuitive example, a stick figure representation of a human body does a good job of encoding the body’s configuration with respect to the world and the observer. Furthermore, each part of the stick figure can describe a component shape of the body at some scale, such as an elongated rectangular shape for the torso and legs, and two smaller tapering tubes for the legs.